Health and Fitness

4 Annual Big Press Conference Part 6 June 20, 2003 President of Russia V.Putin The Kremlin,Moscow From January 1, 2005 there will be no soldiers drafted by the Defence Ministry serving in the Chechen Republic. Starting from January 1, 2006, there must be no conscripts serving in the Interior Ministry troops. The 42nd division deployed in Chechnya becomes fully professional, while by late 2007 we must have all combat ready units transformed into professional ones. If a contract serviceman (a private) in the North Caucasus, or Chechnya, to be more precise, gets 12,000-15,000 roubles a month, then servicemen in other regions of the country will get half of this sum or even less. This is too little. We discussed this issue in detail at a recent session of the Security Council. The defence minister is most energetically raising the issue in the government and with me, of course it would be strange if he did not. The economic block of the government has been set the task to solve this problem so that servicemen, as we agreed before, would not differ from civil servants in terms of remuneration, or would even get slightly more. This is the first point. Second, about housing. You know that we have drafted a new mortgage system, primarily for Defence Ministry servicemen. I hope that it will work; there is no reason to think that it will not. It will work. As for those who are not covered by this scheme, who have served for a long time in the army, there is no alternative to allocating housing to them by the old rules and to grant additional funds for the construction of service housing. We shall tackle all these problems. V. ROMANENKOVA (ITAR-TASS): The government recently held a very difficult session, in particular on doubling GDP. Are you satisfied with the work of the cabinet and the premier? Can you describe them as a team, as Putins team? What ideas do you expect from them next year? Thank you. VLADIMIR PUTIN: I think that I have a team there and a team here. I expect you to support everything good that is being done in the country, at the very least, and to constructively criticise the mistakes we make and sometimes fail to notice. The government has given you a wonderful chance to see how it works, from the first minute to the last. I do not think it was a very sound decision, because it is very difficult to work in front of the cameras. When the cameras are on, you want to look good but your head turns off. So, I hope that the government will conduct part of its work, its weekly sessions behind closed doors not because it may have secrets from you, but so as to discuss and debate problems openly and frankly, probably arguing more heatedly than when you tape their sessions. I see nothing terrible in these disputes. I think they [the cabinet] are people who think in the same frame. And there is nothing strange in the fact that the cabinet members want to achieve common goals but have different approaches to how to do this. On the whole, they are people who think alike, in the same categories, and in this sense they are certainly a team. As for yesterdays agenda, I am perfectly sure that the country needs everything the government prepared for a mid-term programme. What do I mean? Look at the documents that were drafted and approved as the basis [of the programme] yesterday. They are concerned with ensuring property rights, the need, as I have said here, to elaborate new criteria for assessing the work of the executive authorities, and to provide funds based on end results in the case of budget-financed organisations. In fact, the idea is to reform the health service and education, to diversify the Russian economy and propel it towards innovative development, and to continue reducing the tax burden, not to mention the reduction of the unified social tax. This is a serious reduction from 38% to 26%. It is a very big cut. But the programme also stipulates the need for more clear criteria for collecting VAT in capital construction, which is crucial for investment as such. The mid-term programme sets major social tasks, such as reducing poverty. The number of people below the poverty line fell from 22% to 18% this year. The figure was 30% in 2000 and 2001, which means that this is a positive trend. And yet, it is too high for Russia, which has rich economic and intellectual resources. The programme also mentions the growth outlook for the middle class. And the number of people below the poverty line must be cut to 5%. It also speaks about the development of the mortgage system, which actually means the solution of the housing problem that hung over the Soviet Union throughout its history and is bothering us to this day. The current figures show that 40,000 mortgages have been granted this year. The task is to increase them to a million within two to three years, which I think is a realistic task.

Author: niknikolay
Keywords: Annual Big Press Conference Part Ежегодная большая пресс-конференция Ð'ладимир Путин Vladimir Putin Kremlin Moscow седьмая пресса президент Россия President Russia журналисты встреча вопросы Conferences Meetings with Statements Journalists meeting questions ежегодная Российской Федерации Путина российских иностранных журналистов
Added: December 24, 2008